The competition in the airline industry is increasing and airlines are in constant competition with each other to retain their customers and grow their customer base. Although there are many strategies that are being employed by airlines in the aviation industry, we have mentioned 5 of them below that are quite effective and can be used by airlines to attract new customers.
1. Improve Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are quite popular among the airline industry and airlines can leverage loyalty programs to create loyal customers and gain new customers. Most people are natural collectors and they like to collect all sorts of things, even if they use those things or not. With a loyalty program, airlines can not only get repeat business from their existing customers but also attract new ones to their customer base. Loyalty programs are being leveraged by almost every airline nowadays but the key here is for airlines to improve their loyalty programs and provide such a loyalty program and rewards that it automatically attracts people to the airline.
2. Work With Influencers
In the age of digital and social media, influencers hold an important position in the market industry. They exist for a reason and that reason is to influence their audience. One of the reasons behind the success of influencers is their loyal audiences, if they didn’t have audiences, they wouldn’t be successful at all. Airlines can collaborate and work with influencers having a positive reputation to grow their customer base.
Working with influencers is an expensive, yet effective method to grow your customer base. It is being done by businesses in many industries and airlines can employ this strategy to provide the influencer with free air travel in exchange for a certain number of posts on various social media platforms. It can be a win-win situation for both the influencer and the airline, but keep in mind that airlines should only work with reputable influencers whose content aligns with air travel, particularly travel bloggers.
3. Bring Something New to the Table
Bringing something new to the table that no other airline is offering is certainly a good way to attract new customers. Airlines can do this by offering something unique on the journey or introducing a feature that no other airline is offering. Offering something new and unique will put a temptation in air travelers to try out this feature and if the feature is good enough, it will end up being liked by the travelers and they will more likely become loyal customers of the airline.
For instance, Lufthansa, the German airline started offering the in-flight Wi-Fi service back in 2003 and it was something that was quite unique at that time. Simply by introducing this feature, Lufthansa saw a huge surge in its long-haul flights simply because many people were interested in trying out this new feature.
4. Focus on Smartphones
Airlines need to focus on smartphones if they want to attract a younger customer base. For most people these days, smartphones are an important part of their lives. If something cannot be done on smartphones or it is not available on smartphones, the younger audience won’t be interested. Airlines need to keep this in mind and create such an optimized airline website and mobile application that they can be used easily on any mobile phone.
Consumers today rely on their smartphones for everything when traveling, right from booking tickets to navigating to weather to pre-booking a hotel, everything is being done by consumers on their smartphones nowadays. Airlines must keep all of this in mind and empower their apps with features like digital ticketing, flight schedules, baggage handling, etc. Any airline that has the best and most responsive mobile app just like the airline’s website can certainly gain a lot of new customers.
5. Provide Frequent Stopover Flights
Modern-day travelers are quite fond of stopovers. People love traveling these days and posting about their travels all over the internet. So the more places that they can travel, the better. Airlines can use this to their advantage by offering frequent stopover flights. This can enable airlines to attract customers who enjoy traveling and visiting new places. To make things even better, airlines can offer discounts for stopover flights to attract more and more customers.